Hospital ship USNS Comfort sailing home from Haiti

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort pulled up anchor Tuesday in Port-au-Prince and began the long trip home to Baltimore, ending its role in Operation Unified Response-Haiti.

The ship's departure brings to a close a dramatic naval mission launched three days after the Haitian earthquake Jan. 12, when the ship's crew ended scheduled maintenance midway and set sail to provide medical relief to a nation whose hospitals and clinics lay in ruins.

PHOTOS: Images from Comfort's earthquake mission

VIDEO: First-person perspective aboard Comfort

From Jan. 19 to Feb. 27, doctors treated nearly 1,000 patients, performed 843 surgeries, carried out 37 amputations, repaired dozens of bone fractures and delivered nine babies, says Capt. James Ware, the ship's commanding officer. By late February, Ware says in an e-mail, the Haitian government began working with the Pan American Health Organization and other groups to improve the medical care on shore "with the ambition of building back to pre-earthquake medical levels."

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor says the time has come to call the Comfort home. "The doctors on the USNS Comfort did a heroic job treating patients following the earthquake in Haiti and provided essential short-term support, but the Comfort is not a long-term solution," he says.

President Obama will meet with Haitian President Rene Preval today to discuss the relief effort, Vietor says.

But doctors still grappling with those who suffered injuries and infections say Haiti has a long way to go. "There's a continuing need for advanced surgical treatment," says Peter Kelly, director of Sacred Heart Hospital. "The Comfort has been doing a lot of that surgery. Now that they're pulling out, there'll be a void that will be have to be met by hospitals in Haiti."

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U.S. Troops Withdrawing From Haiti

By AP / BEN FOX and JENNIFER KAY

(PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti) — U.S. troops are withdrawing from the shattered capital, leaving many Haitians anxious that the most visible portion of international aid is ending even as the city is still mired in misery and vulnerable to unrest.
As troops packed their duffels and began to fly home this weekend, Haitians and some aid workers wondered whether U.N. peacekeepers and local police are up to the task of maintaining order. More than a half-million people still live in vast encampments that have grown more unpleasant in recent days with the early onset of the rainy season. (See TIME's complete coverage of the Haiti earthquake.)
Some also fear the departure of the American troops is a sign of dwindling international interest in the plight of the Haitian people following the catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake.
"I would like for them to stay in Haiti until they rebuild the country and everybody can go back to their house," said Marjorie Louis, a 27-year-old mother of two, as she warmed a bowl of beans for her family over a charcoal fire on the fake grass of the national stadium.
U.S. officials say the long-anticipated draw down of troops is not a sign of waning commitment to Haiti, only a change in the nature of the operation. Security will now be the responsibility of the 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force and the Haitian police.
A smaller number of U.S. forces — the exact number has not yet been determined — will be needed as the U.N. and Haitian government reassert control, said Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, which runs the Haiti operation.
"Our mission is largely accomplished," Fraser said.
American forces arrived in the immediate aftermath of the quake to treat the wounded, provide emergency water and rations and help prevent a feared outbreak of violence among desperate survivors. They also helped reopen the airport and seaport.
There has been no widespread violence but security is a real issue. A U.N. food convoy traveling from Gonaives to Dessalines on Friday was stopped and overrun by people, who looted two trucks before peacekeepers regained control, U.N. officials said.
They managed to escort the other two back to Gonaives. There were no reports of injuries.
The military operation was criticized by some Haitian senators and foreign leaders as heavy-handed and inappropriate in a country that had been occupied by American forces for nearly two decades in the early 20th century. But ordinary Haitians largely welcomed the troops, many out of disenchantment with their own government.
"They should stay because they have been doing a good job," 35-year-old Lesly Pierre said as his family prepared dinner under a tarp at an encampment in Petionville. "If it was up to our government, we wouldn't have gotten any help at all."
U.S. soldiers said they had nothing but warm encounters with the Haitian people.
"They're real good people. They just want help," Army Private First Class Troy Sims, a 19-year-old from Fresno, California, said as he prepared to board a flight back to the U.S. "I feel that us being here helped a lot. If we weren't here, things probably would have gotten out of control."
There are now about 11,000 troops, more than half of them on ships just off the coast, down from a peak of around 20,000 on Feb. 1. The total is expected to drop to about 8,000 in coming days as the withdrawal gathers steam. The military said more than 700 paratroopers left this weekend.
Soldiers are now gone from the General Hospital, where they once directed traffic and kept order amid the chaos of mass casualties. There are no more Haitian patients on board the USNS Comfort, which treated 8,600 people after the quake. At a country club in Petionville, where some 100,000 Haitians are living in rough shelters in a muddy ravine, only a few soldiers remain of the several hundred there after the disaster.
Alison Thompson said she was nervous about the smaller U.S. troop contingent.
"Soon we are not going to have any security," said Thompson, medical coordinator of the Jenkins/Penn Relief Organization, which runs a field hospital at the edge of the ravine. "Everybody is just so worried that they are pulling out because it's going to get dangerous."
It was the same concern for Louis at the national stadium.
"If the troublemakers see that there is some kind of force here, they will think twice before they do anything," she said. "They are already getting ready to stir up trouble."
But Ted Constan, chief program officer for Partners in Health, said that the way to address security is to get adequate shelter and other aid to the hundreds of thousands of people who are now stranded in squalid encampments.
"The real solution is to deliver services ... rather than turn Haiti into a military state," he said.

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Haiti Is Muse for Many Musicians

The Earthquake in Haiti Has Set Off a Multidude of Musical Releases to Raise Money for Relief Efforts

• In this Feb. 1, 2010 file photo provided by WATW, singers and celebrities, including Barbra Streisand, center, perform at the "We Are The World 25 Years for Haiti" recording session held at Jim Henson Studios on Feb. 1, 2010 in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.  (AP Photo/WATW, Kevin Mazur)
  

• Photo Essay Hope for Haiti The world's biggest stars lend their voices to help Haiti.
  
• Photo Essay Haiti: A Local's Perspective A photographer documents his country's struggle to rebuild after a devastating earthquake
  

• Stories
• Lessons Learned Limited Chile Quake Damage
• Searching for Lessons in Haiti's Tragedy

(AP)  When Kirk Franklin saw the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti, he immediately reacted through song. In a matter of days, the Grammy-winning gospel star enlisted some of the genre's top stars to record a charity single to help with relief efforts.

"You want to respond based on what it is you know to do," he said of "Are You Listening," recorded by more than two dozen artists under the moniker Artists United for Haiti.

They were hardly the only ones. Since the Jan. 12 earthquake, there has been a flood of musical odes and projects for Haiti. While other tragedies have inspired telethons, concerts and charity songs, it seems as if Haiti's misfortune has caused a musical overflow.

There's the all-star "We Are the World" remake that debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (there is also a Spanish-language version with Latin stars); the Jay-Z, Bono, The Edge and Rihanna charity single, "Stranded (Mon Amour Haiti)"; the Simon Cowell-produced remake of "Everybody Hurts," featuring Susan Boyle, Mariah Carey, Michael Buble and others; the digital album "Download to Donate for Haiti," featuring unreleased tracks by Jack Johnson, the Dave Matthews Band and others, presented by the Linkin Park-led Music for Relief; the Nas and Damian Marley song "The Strong Will Continue"; and Eddie Vedder's remake of "My City of Ruin."

Retail store American Outfitters and Filter magazine have released a music CD for Haiti available in all American Eagle stores, and Jamaican artists including Maxi Priest and Barrington Levy and Toots have put out the single "Listen2theCall." There's also the "Hope for Haiti Now" CD, featuring music from the telethon, which was a top seller on iTunes; several songs from the telethon rose on the Billboard charts.

"I know there's a lot of people on it, but that's not a bad thing," said Quincy Jones of the musical efforts for Haiti. He orchestrated the first "We Are the World," session 25 years ago, and the latest rendition, which features Barbra Streisand, Lil Wayne, Miley Cyrus, Wyclef Jean and dozens of other music stars.

"It's the kind of thing everybody should contribute to and let everything fall where it may," Jones said.

Among the songs available on Amazon.com is will.i.am's remix of The Who's "My Generation," featuring Slash.

"The response has been very strong from the music community," said Kristin Smith, senior manager of digital music at Amazon, comparing the artistic output to that seen after the tragedies of Katrina and 9/11. "It has been very generous in terms of what artists have done."

It's also come about very quickly. Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda managed to cobble an entire album of new material for the organization Music for Relief in a matter of days with help from other artists who donated tracks for the project.

"It really showed that if you really want to do something and time is of the essence, the music industry can really mobilize and get something great together quickly," he said. "That's a product of people's will to do it and it's a product of the technology that we've got at our fingertips."

David Saltzman, executive director of the Robin Hood Foundation and one of the advisers for the "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon, said there are more musical efforts today to help Haiti than for past tragedies because of how easy it is to record and share music.

"More artists who feel compelled to do something can get their music in the hands of people who are excited about purchasing it and saving lives," he said.

But Franklin wonders if it can be too much and worries that with a multitude of releases, some good efforts might get lost.

"Sometimes, when we have too many, when it becomes too fragmented, sometimes it can lose its power," he said. "But you've still got to let people move and do what's in their hearts. You've got to do what's in your heart and not respond to the numbers."

Shinoda said he had some concerns that his project, which is still being added to by artists online, could get lost, but thinks that fans who know what they want will find it.

"Hopefully, the stuff that you like filters to the top and you can listen to that, or you have a way of searching through all the madness and finding the stuff that you like," he said.

Carlos Santana, who was on the "We Are the World" remake, thinks it can never be too much if it's helping save lives.

"The tsunami or Katrina or this situation experienced in Haiti," he said, is an indication "for all of us as humans to take care of one another. There will be other ones and anything we can use with music ... is always welcomed. It's never enough to be of service to humanity. It's never enough."

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY 
© MMX, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Haitian family survives 2 big quakes in 2 months

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer 

The Desarmes family left their native Haiti two weeks after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, joining the eldest son in Chile for what seemed a refuge from the fear and chaos of Port-au-Prince.
Their sense of security lasted barely a month. It was shattered at 3:43 a.m. Saturday when one of the most powerful quakes on record shook a swath of Chile.
All the Desarmes' immediate family survived both quakes. But twice cursed, the family now sleeps in the garden of a home that the eldest son, Pierre Desarmes, found for them just south of the Chilean capital of Santiago. They fear yet another temblor will strike.
"I left my country and came here because of an earthquake," Seraphin Philomene, a 21-year-old student and cousin of Desarmes, said Wednesday. "And here, the same thing!"
"My God, I left my country and I didn't die, but I'm going to die here!"
Pierre Desarmes, 34, managed to get his family out of Haiti thanks to personal contacts at the Chilean Embassy in Port-au-Prince and the Chilean armed forces. Nine members of his family — his parents, two brothers and their families, and three cousins — arrived in Santiago on a Chilean air force plane Jan. 23.
Desarmes, the lead singer of a popular Haitian reggaeton band in Chile, still gets choked up when he recalls seeing his family for the first time stepping off the plane.
"I saw them but I didn't believe it. I said, 'My God, they're here.' It was a very difficult moment," he said, speaking in French in the garden of the house the family now calls home.
"Each time I think about it, I get sad, because I realize I was able to do this because I was here. But there are so many people who are there and I don't know what's going to happen to them."
His relatives had to leave Haiti with only hours' notice, receiving instructions on where to go via cell phone text messages from a relative in the United States who was in contact with Desarmes in Santiago. Philomene didn't even have time to pack, dashing to the Chilean Embassy when she received word the family had been cleared to fly out.
Saturday's earthquake has made a difficult transition even more traumatic.
"When the aftershocks come, they refuse to stay in the house," Desarmes said, sipping a Coke at a table in the garden, his relatives sitting nearby.
"I have to talk to them all day long telling them: `There are no problems, it's a country that's prepared for earthquakes, it'll pass, it's not so bad.' But they don't hear me. Psychologically for them, they're still really affected by it."
Desarmes' brother, Stanley Desarmes, 32, is deeply unsettled. The father of a 2-year-old girl, Nelia, who plays in the yard, he worries for his family's safety and is thinking about uprooting them again to move somewhere with less danger of earthquakes.
"I don't know what I can do, but staying isn't possible," he said. "I could die and I could lose my family. I have to leave. I don't know where, I don't know how. But I don't want to die with my family here."
Philomene, his cousin, plans to stay, hoping to bring the rest of her family to Chile. She was the only member of her immediate family to get out because she was living with the Desarmes in the Haitian capital to finish her studies. Her mother, father, two sisters and a brother are still in Cap-Haitien, a town in northern Haiti about 90 miles from the capital.
"I've had no news from them," she said, choking up.
Reached late Wednesday by The Associated Press in Cap-Haitien, Philomene's father, Luigene Philomene, was elated at the news that his daughter was safe. He said he hadn't heard from her since before Chile's earthquake and had been trying to reach relatives in Port-au-Prince for an update.
The elder Philomene said when he heard that his daughter had been in the Chile earthquake he thought of a Haitian saying that loosely translates as "we saved her from the river and she ended up in the sea." Now he feels she has divine protection and the 43-year-old said he would eagerly join his daughter in South America if he could.
"God is looking for out for us," he said. "Our family didn't die in Haiti so they aren't going to die in Chile either."
Francius Pierre, a cousin of Seraphin's in Port-au-Prince, had already learned from a brother that his relatives in Chile survived. Pierre, a university student who injured his knee in the Haitian quake, said Seraphin and his other relatives moved from Haiti for safety.
"If they knew something like this could happen again they never would have gone," he said.
___
Associated Press Writer Ben Fox in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report.

Haitians Pierre Richard Desarmes, left, Philomene, center, and Jean Mary chat with their family members living in Haiti in San Bernardo, Chile, Wednesday, March 3, 2010. After a strong earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12, Pierre, Philomene and Jean moved to Chile which was hit by a strong earthquake less than two months later on Feb. 27. (AP Photo/Jorge Sanchez)

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Chile and Haiti: A Tale of Two Quakes

By CAITLIN MILLAT

Updated 6:45 AM EST, Wed, Mar 3, 2010

AP

The quake that rattled Chile Saturday landed in the record books as the fifth-biggest quake ever measured, an 8.8-magnitude monster that ripped through the South American country and killed some 700 people in the coastal nation.

It came just six weeks after another quake shook Haiti, ravaging the impoverished region and leaving 220,000 dead in its wake -- even though it was nearly 500 times weaker than its Chilean counterpart. 

As crews continue to dig bodies from the rubble in both Chile and Haiti, experts wonder: Why was one nation devastated, and the other relatively spared?

• The simple answer: money, Richard Stearnswrites for the Seattle Times. Over half of the Haitian population lives on less than $1 a day, Stearns writes, and only half over the age of 15 can read, while in Chile, the average citizen earns $15,000 annually and the literacy rate is greater than 95 percent. "Most of the deaths would have been prevented -- if Haiti hadn't been so very poor," Stearns writes.
   
• The greater abundance of wealth in Chile means more buildings were structurally sound and able to withstand the quake, scientist Colin Stark writes for CNN. Poverty is "what ultimately kills most people during an earthquake" because it determines how strong buildings are built: and when nations are cash-strapped like Haiti, "it means the choice between building robustly or building cheaply is not a choice at all," he writes.
   
• Chile also had in place pre-quake a "working democracy" that was able to internally disperse resources to deal with the quake immediately and to fight for victims' safety, Anne Applebaum writes for the Washington Post. "The recovery process that follows a disaster is always deeply political," she writes. "Despite a stronger earthquake and more damaging aftershocks, Chile will return to normal faster than Haiti. Luck has nothing to do with it."
   
• A mixture of luck and luxury saved Chile from Haiti's fate, according to the Wall Street Journal's editorial staff. The quake's touchdown point -- away from populated areas -- as well as access to free-market fringe benefits like modern health care, technology and education made the nation more equipped to handle a natural disaster, according to the editorial staff: "Chileans have prepared well for the big one."
   
• Ultimately, Chile was spared the devastating losses of Haiti because of its status as a first-world, economicaly developed nation, Gilbert Mercier writes for the News Junkie Post. The difference between the nations' respective quake recoveries is a "humanely despicable injustice" that can be attributed to Chile's "modern and adequate infrastructure" and solid government: "It is difficult not to be shocked, and quite frankly revolted by the incredible disparity between the consequences, in terms of life and death, of two similar events," he writes.

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